Evidence for Innovation

European Schoolnet is committed to supporting innovation in education through mainstreaming effective teaching and learning practice aligned with 21st century standards and expectations for the education of all students.

We run a number of projects and studies aimed at providing concrete evidence and data in the area of innovation in education on which to base policy recommendations.

Additionally, we also regularly publish European Schoolnet's Perspectives papers, which summarize research evidence from key studies on innovation in education, translate this evidence into concrete ideas for policy action, and highlight the implications of the evidence for using technology in teaching and learning.

Policy experimentations

European Schoolnet runs large-scale policy experimentations which use rigorous research methods to develop innovative educational tools and resources which are then tested in order to arrive at results that can be effectively mainstreamed. Our current policy experimentations include:

MENTEP (Mentoring Technology-Enhanced Pedagogy) is a policy experimentation which aims to develop a reliable, user-friendly and sustainable prototype tool for teachers to self-assess progress in Technology-Enhanced Teaching (TET) competence. MENTEP aims to test the tool's impact on TET competencies and peer learning in field trials; provide policy-makers with a national and EU picture of teachers' TET competence, its evolution over a school year and training needs; and disseminate and sustain the tool, the experimental approach and the findings through online courses on European Schoolnet's Academy.

TeachUP (Teacher UPskilling Policy experimentation) is a policy experimentation aiming to develop online courses for teachers in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) or Continuing Professional Development (CPD) on topics related to their new role: Teacher collaboration, Personalising learning, Formative peer assessment and Creativity.

Future Classroom related Lab projects

In January 2012, we launched the Future Classroom Lab in our Brussels office - a fully equipped, reconfigurable, teaching and learning space developed by European Schoolnet, its 31 supporting Ministries of Education and several leading educational technology providers. It has been designed as a ‘Living Lab' to showcase and experiment on how ICT can be implemented in schools and where policy makers, ICT suppliers, teachers and educational researchers can come together to:

find concrete evidence for the effective use of technology in schools to influence future education policies

support schools and teachers in their teaching practices

develop a network of schools engaged in the validation of innovative approaches on how to use technology in the classroom.

Around the Future Classroom Lab, a series of EU funded projects aim at tackling the issue of mainstreaming innovation in schools though pilot activities, exchange of best practices, training sessions on site and online as well as designing new learning activities and products:

CO-LAB is a forward-looking project focused on making collaborative teaching and learning a reality in the classroom. Practitioners and policy makers need a dedicated space and time to experiment and better understand what collaborative teaching and learning means in terms of policy and practice. CO-LAB provides these stakeholders with that opportunity.

ITELab (Initial Teachers Education Lab) is a Knowledge Alliance project between higher education institutions and industry aiming to foster innovation and knowledge exchange in initial/pre-service teacher education (ITE). The project will develop new course modules and a MOOC that, following the pilot phase, will be delivered to thousands of student teachers from across Europe.